A Good Team Finishes Well
The only gauge to measure one football team from another is the won-loss record, which tells us the bottom line and little else.
But what I couldn’t keep from mulling on my drive back from Durham yesterday – while listening to Wake’s basketball loss to William & Mary on the radio – was that the Wake Forest football team that beat Duke yesterday 45-34 to finish 5-7 was a pretty good football team, and how the difference between this year’s team and the one that stunned the football world in 2006 by beating Georgia Tech in the ACC championship game for 11 victories and a trip to the Orange Bowl wasn’t anywhere close to as great as the final records might suggest.
All that went right for the Deacons during their storybook championship season went wrong three seasons later. Only two teams beat this year’s team by more than three points and two of them – Boston College and Georgia Tech – had to go to overtime to do so.
And if Baylor’s star quarterback Robert Griffin hadn’t been sidelined with a season-ending injury, then I imagine that every team to beat the Deacons would be bowl bound.
There has to be at least a modicum of satisfaction in that.
“Unfortunately our record doesn’t show it, but we know we’re a pretty good football team,’’ senior Riley Skinner said. “We just didn’t make enough plays down the stretch. But for me, I know this is probably the most talented offense we’ve had at Wake since I’ve been here.
“That hasn’t always factored into wins, but for me it’s been really fun to be around guys who are that talented to make that many plays. It’s made it a lot easier for me.’’
The mojo was in Wake’s locker room in 2006 and the Deacons could sense it. A favorite saying of ex-Deacons’ coach Bill Dooley was that ``success begets success,’’ another way of saying that everything’s easier with the wind at your back.
Senior defensive tackle John Russell was knocked out of yesterday’s game with a concussion, but afterward was clear-headed enough to talk with the media.
“It’s easier to play with confidence and come out on fire and play hot for four quarters when everything has been going your way,’’ Russell said. “That’s why I’m really proud of these guys, finishing up this last game and the only thing we had to play for was another win in the win column if we win. That’s all we had to gain. And to lose was just another L in the loss column. But we came over here and played tough and kind of showed some of that tenacity we had this year, that never-say-die attitude.
“We felt like this was really a statement of how much we care about playing football and how much pride we take in this university and our fans and our families and people to come out and watch us.’’
Coach Jim Grobe said he’s never been much for comparing one team to the next. But he said he’ll remember the 2009 Deacons fondly.
“I’ve said before I think this team is as capable of being in a bowl a game as any of the last three teams,’’ Grobe said. “I don’t know if it’s an 11 or 10-win team, but we went through that one stretch where we played five bowl teams, a Top 10 team, a Top 20 team. We took two teams to overtime that were good teams, came up short with a Top 10 team (Georgia Tech) in overtime at their place.
“So this was not a bad football team. It was a brutal schedule, I mean a really brutal schedule.’’